The speech therapist in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: Early approach to oral-motor and feeding skills
Sara Panizzolo
Scientific literature shows that newborns hospitalised in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) — premature, low weight or with neurological damage — have today, thanks to cutting-edge interventions, a higher chance of survival, but at the same time they are also at increased risk of developing difficulties in several developmental areas. There are also numerous studies of scientific evidence with an international profile supporting early intervention with oral-motor stimulation in order to favour the passage of the newborn’s nutrition from a passive one to an independent one exclusively per os and therefore reduce hospitalisation time. The Speech and Language Therapy approach, which works in close collaboration with a multidisciplinary team, envisages an intervention that starts from the NICU organisational model and is after directed at the infant and the parents.
Keywords
Preterm infants, Oral-motor skills, Oral-motor intervention, Feeding skills.